Look closely at a sake label and you’ll often find a percentage. If you assume it’s the alcohol, you’re in good company, and you’re also wrong.
It tells you how much of each rice grain was left after polishing, which means that, unlike almost every other number you’ll see on a bottle, smaller is usually better, or at least more expensive.
Some brewers mill away more than half of every grain to get at the starchy centre, and if that strikes you as a lot of rice to throw away for the sake of a drink, I’d agree with you.
If you come to sake from wine, as I did, you may find that your wine knowledge helps less than you’d hoped. The terms are unfamiliar, they’re often written only in Japanese, and there’s no handy grape variety on the front to grab hold of.
What you really want to know is how the sake will smell and taste, and the label stands between you and finding out. The good news is that a handful of terms will get you a long way.
What is sake?
Sake is made from rice, water, yeast and koji, a mould grown on steamed rice whose job is to turn the rice’s starch into sugar so the yeast has something to ferment. Wine has the advantage here, since grapes come with their sugar already in them. Premium sake then falls into two broad families: sake with a small amount of distilled alcohol added, and sake without it, which is called junmai.
Why polishing matters
Within each family, the grade depends on how hard the rice has been polished. The outer layers of the grain hold fats, proteins and minerals, which brewers generally prefer to do without, so they mill them away and keep the starchy centre. The percentage left over is called the seimaibuai, and it’s the number on the label that caught you out a moment ago. Everyday sake may keep 70% or more of the grain, while some premium bottles keep less than 30%. As a general rule, more polishing gives a lighter, more fragrant sake, and less polishing leaves more weight and rice character, so neither end of the scale is the right one, and it depends on what you like and what you’re eating.
The six main premium grades
| Grain remaining | Alcohol added | No alcohol added |
|---|---|---|
| 70% or less | Honjozo | Junmai* |
| 60% or less | Ginjo | Junmai ginjo |
| 50% or less | Daiginjo | Junmai daiginjo |
*Junmai has had no minimum polishing requirement since 2004, though many are still polished to around 70%.
You may notice that “alcohol added” sounds like a polite way of saying “cheaper”. It isn’t necessarily, and I explain why in my next post, which goes through fifteen terms you’re likely to meet on a sake label. In the meantime, if you remember only one thing, make it that percentage. It will tell you more about the sake than anything else on the bottle, and now you know not to mistake it for the alcohol.
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